


less of a scottish dagger feel

by ottermo



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Farah loves Dirk, Gen, Todd loves Dirk, the Agency love each other and everything’s fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 13:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Or “In Which Farah Does Some Sleuthing”.There’s suspiciously little to be found in the Blackwing archives under the name ‘Dirk Gently’.





	less of a scottish dagger feel

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a text post musing on tumblr, but I decided to try and... write it instead. I’m still getting used to these characters, so bear with me!
> 
> Special thanks to JaneDoe33 for spurring me on with this one :)

“So, I solved it,” Farah said, late one night, after a day spent burning and shredding the pre-digitization Blackwing archives.

Todd blinked. “What?”

“The curious mystery,” Farah explained, “of why Dirk doesn’t have a Blackwing file. I told you I was running searches, right? Like, for Mona, I specifically corrupted every document that mentioned her name, and rewrote the backup to that version, before we wiped the system. So if there’s a reverse switch we don’t know about, there’s, y’know, an extra layer of protection before someone could get to her info. But under ‘Dirk Gently’? Nothing. Okay, there were a couple of memos from this past year, because it seems like Supervisor Friedkin wasn’t a big writer. But nothing in the archives.”

“Huh. Weird.”

“ _So_ weird, right? Because even for Mona they had pages of interview transcriptions, and she’s not much of a talker. You’d expect Dirk’s documentation to be... extensive.”

Todd gave a half-grin - Farah was right. By the time the Agency group chat was three weeks old, it had eaten up almost half of the storage on Todd’s phone.

“Anyway, I changed it up and searched for Project Icarus, which would work at least for files created after he was officially absorbed into the program and given a designation. Which is where things get interesting.” Farah paused, apparently for dramatic effect. “Did you know Dirk isn’t actually British?”

There it was. Todd shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Wait– you did?”

“Yeah. I mean, I at least figured there was something. That day when Priest... you know, at the Cardenas place. He called him by another name. It sounded - like, Eastern European? Svlad something.”

“Svlad Cjelli,” Farah supplied. “He lived in Romania until Blackwing took him. I wasn’t trying to pry, so I didn’t read the rest, but, doesn’t he... blame an awful lot of his behaviour on being British, for a person who apparently didn’t even go there until he was past twenty? He’s more British than the _Queen_.”

That was a fair point. “You’re still not over the teabag thing, huh?”

“He didn’t have to pour it away, that was just rude.” Farah grinned. “No, I just...wondered if you’d talked to him about it.”

“I haven’t,” said Todd. “I think... I think, this is just a theory, but I’m pretty sure he uses the British thing as an escape. All the stuff they did to Svlad Cjelli in Blackwing, they didn’t do it to Dirk, you know? He wants them to be separate. I respect that.”

“I don’t _not_ respect it,” Farah said thoughtfully, “But do you think it’s healthy?”

Todd, who knew in all-too-painful detail how unequipped he was to judge anyone else’s mental state, let that question hang.

“I think he – I think it means something to him, that we play along with it,” he said eventually. “He knows I heard Priest use his - other name. I think every time he makes a comment about pavements and missing letters or calls his evening meal ‘tea’ even though that’s dumb as hell when he talks about the other kind of tea just as often and it’s needlessly confusing–“ he broke off, cleared his throat, “Okay, wow, I didn’t know I cared about that so much. But what I meant to say is that every time he draws attention to his Britishness, I think part of him thinks I’m going to challenge him and be like, ‘but you’re actually Romanian!’ and I’m just, I’m not going to do that to him. Maybe one day he’ll want to tell us about it, and it should be on Dirk’s timetable, not that asshole Priest’s.”

Farah took a few moments to process this. Then she gave a slow smile. “You love him a lot, don’t you?”

Todd couldn’t argue with that. “Yeah. And I’m not the only one.”

“No, you’re not,” she said softly. “Some of the titles of those documents, Todd... I didn’t even have to read them to know they were... bad. I’d kill those monsters all over again if I could.”

“I’d let you,” said Todd. He nudged her playfully. “I mean, I’d offer to help, but I’d know you didn’t need it.”

“That’s growth, Brotzman. I should text Amanda.”

He laughed. “I’m getting there.”

“I think we all are.”

“Yeah.”

The sunlight through the Agency windows was dying out, and Todd slipped his arm through Farah’s as they looked out on the sleepy city.

“He might never tell us,” Todd said. “He talks and he talks and he talks but there’s so much he– leaves out. But while he’s okay, we don’t have to push it, right?”

“Right.”

Farah tilted her head so it was resting on Todd’s shoulder, her hair tickling his ear. “He better not throw a teabag at me ever again, though.”

Todd chuckled. “You know, I really don’t think he will.”

 


End file.
